Chapter 1
‘Ow.’ My beer bottle clinked
against my teeth as I felt a hand gently grasp my shoulder from behind.
‘Oh my god,
Christy, is that you? How great to see you!’
‘I’m not-’…
Christy, I was about to say. But then I turned and saw whose hand it was. ‘Hi.’
‘Ten years,
can you believe it?’ asked Jack as his smile threw me back to our last year in
school. ‘You look… different but I’d
still recognize you anywhere. Did you come from France or are you based here
now? Wait, we both need another drink and then we can have a proper catch-up.’
He pointed to my bottle. ‘Another beer? I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,
okay?’
He loped off
to the bar where our former classmates jockeyed for the overworked barman’s
attention. And I admit it, dear Reader. I ogled him. I took in his broad
shoulders beneath the fitted black jacket, his long jeans-clad legs and wavy
blonde mop of hair.
Jack Winslow,
my unrequited love, had actually just spoken to me. He was buying my beer! …
All right, so he thought he was buying Christy’s beer, but still, beggars shall
not be choosy about free drinks.
When the
reunion invitation arrived with the school’s annual newsletter I chucked it
into the bin. Those newsletters arrived every year in December, as welcome as a
urinary tract infection. They’d wheedled my mailing address from my Dad and I
didn’t have the guts to ring them to opt out for fear that they’d extort me for
a donation for the playing fields or something. I’d been miserable on those
fields. I hated every rain-soaked blade of grass that slipped me up and each
ankle-twisting rut.
Jack returned
with our drinks. He set my empty bottle on a nearby table for me. ‘Cheers. To
old times,’ he said.
‘Cheers. Jack
Winslow, I can hardly believe it’s you. Here’s to new times, eh?’
His grin
faltered, then widened. Great work, Annabel. Two minutes into the conversation
is just the right time to suggest a future together.
‘Believe it,’
he said. ‘So tell me what you’ve been doing for the last decade. Are you living
in London now?’
I nodded. ‘I
live in Notting Hill. Well, according to the real estate agents anyway. My
closest Tube is Shepherd’s Bush though. Where are you living?’
‘Well as long
as we’re speaking in real estate agent, then I’m in South Hampstead. If we’re
being honest then I’m off Finchley Road.’ He stared at me. There were tiny
lines around his grey eyes and his lashes were darker than I remembered. ‘I’m
really happy you’re here.’
I smiled,
surprised that he even knew who I was. Then I remembered that he didn’t. To him
I was Christy. Of course he’d be happy to see her. Christy and Jack were our
school’s answer to Brangelina, though I don’t think they actually went out
together. They just swanned around the school in their own golden glow, the
central figures in our teenage romantic fantasies.
Jack and I
stood at the edge of the room together watching the crowd. Five minutes ago I
was just Annabel Markham, aka AnnaBall, Annabell-end, all-round bully fodder
and soft target. Suddenly I was promoted to head of the class.
What a
difference short-sightedness makes.
‘Do you wear
glasses?’ I asked before taking a swig of my beer.
His brow
furrowed as he hesitated. ‘Ah, well, no. Why?’
‘Oh, well, I
guess I remembered you with specs, that’s all. I wasn’t implying that you need
them.’ Please shut up, Annabel.
‘Oh, you mean
reading glasses. Yes, I did sometimes, for my astigmatism. But that’s been
corrected now.’
He kept
staring at me like he had more to say. Surely he’d figured out that I wasn’t
Christy. Aside from being among the tallest girls in our year, we looked
nothing alike. My hair had been much darker, for one thing. And my waistline
had been much bigger for another.
But he really
did seem to think I was Christy. Which wasn’t at all how I imagined my night would
go when I’d first walked in.
I nearly
didn’t turn up at all. Who willingly
goes back into the bear pit once they’re freed? Someone who’s flippin’ out of
her mind, that’s who.
My heart
started rattling in my chest before I’d even set foot through the Richmond
pub’s door. Upstairs, a table was set up beside the function room’s entrance.
Two women waited to label the alumni but I didn’t recognize them and it was
easy enough to sidestep their markers and Scotch Tape. I was well-practiced in
the art of creeping about.
I should
never have let Kate convince me to come. Of course all the feelings I’d packed
away over the years wouldn’t stay neatly stowed. They’d wait till I was surrounded
by my classmates to spring their locks.
To my relief,
at least there was no break in conversation when I stepped in to the room. A
few faces turned curiously but, recognizing neither friend nor foe, quickly
turned away again. After twenty minutes I was still alone on the fringes of the
party. I may as well have been sixteen again.
Actually,
that’s not quite true, because I was rarely left alone then. Given the
alternative, this was a bit better.
So Jack’s
chattiness came as quite the surprise. He’d said about ten words to me during
the whole of secondary school.
‘Do you see
any of the old crowd yet?’ he asked, scanning the room.
My skin
suddenly crawled with dread. What if Christy herself was somewhere in the room?
Or her friends? They’d know in a second that I was an imposter. Then they’d
single me out in front of the whole room and it’d be eleventh grade all over
again. ‘No, no, I don’t see anyone.’ I
started edging toward the door.
‘Me neither.
But I might not recognize some of them. People can change a lot in ten years.’
He glanced again at the crowd. ‘Isn’t it odd? When you’re in school you can’t
wait to get away from everyone and when you’ve left you’re excited to see them
again.’
Speak for
yourself. ‘Surely you didn’t hate school though. What’s there to hate when
everyone loves you and you’re the teacher’s pet?’
He laughed
before catching himself. ‘You’re exaggerating. I was never the teacher’s pet.’
‘But everyone
did love you, so there’s no use denying it.’
‘What about
you? The school went into mourning when you moved to France. Seriously, they
flew the flags at half-mast. Bereavement counsellors were called in.’
I could think
of at least one girl who wasn’t in mourning when Christy moved away. ‘No black
arm bands?’
‘They changed
our uniforms. Head to toe widow’s weeds for the girls and black suits for the
boys.’
‘Well that
was a long time ago,’ I said. ‘They probably renamed a building or something
and went back to the usual uniforms eventually.’
He touched
his beer to mine. ‘Immortalized in concrete. That’s my dream. Hey, what do you
say we get out of here? No one else is here that we know anyway.’
‘Definitely!
Let’s go.’ Before Christy sodding Blake turned up.
I’d tell him
later about the confusion.
Chapter 2
To my relief, we left Richmond
completely. The last thing I needed was for poor Jack to see Christy sodding
Blake and think he was having a doppelganger moment on the sidewalk. Though I
still couldn’t believe we actually looked alike.
The Christy I
knew had cold blue eyes. Cold-as-a-shark, dead-soul blue eyes. This detail was
burned into my memory because she never looked away when she tormented me. That
girl had not one ounce of shame in her.
My eyes were
green. Dad said they were beautiful, like cat’s eyes, but he had a parental
duty of kindness.
People can
change a lot in ten years and small details get forgotten or misremembered. So
Jack didn’t seem to notice the color change as we chatted all the way into
Soho. I was surprised when he pointed to his office on Soho Square. I’d always
pegged him as the City type.
‘You really
work for Fox?’ I said as we found a tiny corner table in the crowded pub
nearby. ‘Oiling the great wheels of Hollywood? Do you get to walk down the red
carpet and get papped falling out of nightclubs with your knickers showing?’
He looked
uncomfortable as he sipped his winter ale. ‘I’m not an actor, or Paris Hilton,
despite the tiny dog I like to carry around in my gym bag.’ He saw my face.
‘Joking,’ he said as I laughed. ‘I don’t go to the gym.’
‘You don’t
really have a-’
‘Dog? No. And
I’m just a lowly marketer. I’m the cog inside the cog inside the cog inside the great wheels of Hollywood.’
‘Do you like
it?’
‘I love it!
What’s not to love about getting to see new releases before everyone else?’
‘Are you the
one who hires the cheesy voiceover man? One
man, one banana, one unholy love story,’ I intoned in my best radio
announcer voice.
‘I wish I
was, but they’re cheesed up before I get my hands on them. We’re the ones who
create the marketing for Europe. It’s not glamorous but I work with a lot of
nice people. What about you? Did you stay in France after school?’
Uh oh. There
was really no way to answer his question without fibbing. A guilty pang made my
stomach lurch. Was this where I had to tell Jack the truth, and watch that
friendly, open smile fade as he realized we didn’t really have a history
together? I knew what would happen then. The easy banter we’d shared all
evening would dry up. It wouldn’t matter that it had nothing to do with who
we’d been ten years before. Then he’d quickly finish his ale and make some
excuse to leave.
I didn’t want
that to happen. Not when we were having so much fun.
I could,
however, tell him the truth about me. At least then it was just one omission
rather than a series of lies that he’d hate me for.
‘I went to
university here. In Leeds. I’ve been in England all along. How about you?’
He hesitated.
Maybe when he said “school”, he meant university. Christy probably kept in
touch after she moved, wrote him long letters that were definitely not
postmarked Leeds. I steeled myself for his next response.
‘I took a
year out and then went to Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘What a great city. Have you
been?’
Relief
flooded through me. Then I remembered that it was only a momentary stay of
execution. ‘I’ve been up for the Fringe a few times,’ I said. ‘It is a great
city. Did you travel the world on your year off, just you and your backpack and
your little dog?’
‘Something
like that, minus the dog and the backpack. What are you doing now?’
I told him
about my dietetics practice. Like Jack, I loved my work. Unlike him, my job was
about as far from glamorous as you could get without cleaning motorway
lavatories for a living. ‘I’m really glad we ran into each other,’ I said as we
sipped our drinks. My tension was easing away with distance from our old
classmates. I was having a tremendous time, the kind of time I’d dreamed of all
through school. There was no harm in carrying on the charade for a bit longer,
just until I found a natural way to introduce the fact that I was another
person altogether. No big deal.
‘I nearly didn’t go to the reunion,’ I said.
‘I didn’t-’
‘How could
you even think about not going? You were the most popular girl in school!’
I clamped my
mouth shut on my next words. I was about to tell him about not wanting to see
the girls who’d bullied me. Girls like Christy. Must remember you are Christy. Obviously I’d make an excellent
secret agent. Lips as secure as Fort Knox, that’s me.
‘It’s fate,’
he continued. ‘I mean really, what are the chances?’ He was staring into my
eyes with a look that I’d begun to recognize in the past few years, since
losing seventy pounds and gaining a social life. It wasn’t fate on Jack’s mind.
‘Well, it was
a gathering of former classmates,’ I said, not daring to believe what I was
seeing. ‘It would have been more fateful if we’d run into each other randomly
in London.’
I hadn’t just
had a crush on Jack in school. I truly thought I could love him one day, if
only he knew I was alive. But I was about three miles below his radar, which
was ironic since in those days I was probably visible from space. So I gathered
bits of him wherever I could. His every utterance, and the cloying, spicy scent
of his AXE Fusion, were committed to memory. I went to all his home football
matches, even when it rained, even when I was almost the only one standing
there, sodden at the edge of the hated playing field.
‘Well, fate
or not, this is fantastic,’ he said.
He was doing
it again. Looking at me like I was the last handful of Doritos in the bag. I
nodded, not trusting my voice.
‘Could I see
you again, do you think?’
Again I
nodded. I wondered how he felt about muteness in a date. Wait a minute. Was he
asking me on a date?! ‘I’d love that.’
Gently he
leaned forward and put his warm lips to mine. It was a deal with the Devil,
sealed with a kiss. By the time we traded cell numbers and said good night, I
was floating about six inches above the London sidewalk.
